The years 1857-1859 were seminal years for theory proposals.
1859 was the year Darwin published his "theory of natural
selection" to replace the reigning paradigm of "intelligent
design." According to Francisco Ayala, before Darwin "the
functional design of organisms and their features seemed to argue
for the existence of a designer. It was Darwin's greatest accomplishment
to show that the directive organization of living beings can be
explained as the result of a natural process, natural selection,
without any need to resort to a Creator or other external agent."
Ayala further clarifies the opposing paradigms by stating that
"Darwin's theory encountered opposition in religious circles,
not so much because he proposed the evolutionary origin of living
things (which had been proposed many times before, even by Christian
theologians), but because his mechanism, natural selection, excluded
God as the explanation accounting for the obvious design of organisms."1 Despite both
religious and scientific objections, by 1960 Darwin's mechanism
of natural selection had completely triumphed over the concept
of intelligent design as the scientific explanation accounting
for the obvious design of organisms.

In 1857 James Hall, a respected paleontologist, proposed a
theory to explain the origin of mountains and their thick packages
of sediments during a meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The idea, later supplemented
by J. D. Dana, was that a huge trough-like depression known as
a geosyncline became filled with sediments and subsided, until
it gradually became unstable, and together with heat from the
interior of the earth was crushed, folded and elevated into a
mountain chain. Geosynclinal theory, while dynamic in the vertical
plane, was essentially a static model of the earth's crust with
respect to its horizontal plane, a crucial distinction which set
it apart from the theory of continental drift. Nevertheless, as
late as 1960, geosynclinal theory reigned as the established theory
with the concept of continental drift being largely ignored (or
ridiculed) by most geologists. In 1859, the hypothesis of continental
drift (the precursor to plate tectonics) was proposed by Antonio
Snider who had noticed the remarkable jigsaw puzzle fit of the
continents, especially Africa and South America. Snider's concept
was developed into a coherent hypothesis in the early 1900s by
meteorologist Alfred Wagner, who added impressive lines of evidence
from ancient rock matches, glaciation, mineral belts, mountain
ranges, and fossil sequences to Snider's jigsaw puzzle fit of
the continents. By 1950 the following lines of evidences existed
to support the hypothesis of continental drift. Evidence that
the continents had once been together and had since drifted apart
included:

The jig-saw puzzle fit of the continents (especially when
continental slopes were taken into account).

Matching ancient mineral belts, mountain ranges, and rock
sequences. The late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic rock sequences
matched between the southern continents rather like the pages
of a book that had been torn in half. Further, the more recent
Cenozoic layers were entirely different.

Ancient (late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic) animal and plant
fossils were similar, while Cenozoic fauna and flora were different.

Ancient (Permian) glacial till match ups, plus the direction
of striations matched up when all of the southern continents
including India, Australia, and Antarctica were put together.

Paleoclimatic and paleomagnetic data indicated that either
the poles or the continents had moved (especially true for North
America and Europe). The later inference was far more consistent
with the data, because it assumed only one north pole, whereas
the former required the postulation of two north poles).

Yet, in spite of this substantial evidence for continental
drift, this hypothesis was largely ignored or scorned and ridiculed.
Why? Reasons most frequently cited by apologists include the fact
that most geologists were working in the northern hemisphere (where
the evidence was less obvious) and that continental drift lacked
a mechanism (later to be known as sea floor spreading) to move
the continents through the more rigid, dense sea floor. The fact
that geosynclinal theory also lacked a testable mechanism wasn't
noted until after the triumph of plate tectonics. I suggest that
the main reason that continental drift was ignored or scorned
was the power of the "established" geosynclinal theory
or the power of the static (rather than mobile) continent paradigm
to blind the geologic community to new ways of thinking. In fact,
so powerful was the established geosynclinal theory that the 1960
edition of Clark and Stearn's Geological Evolution of North
America compared the status of geosynclinal theory which was
thought to explain "the origin of mountains from geosynclines,"
and Darwin's theory of "the origin of species through natural
selection":

"The geosynclinal theory is one of the great unifying
principles in geology. In many ways its role in geology is similar
to that of the theory of evolution which serves to integrate
the many branches of the biological sciences. The geosynclinal
theory is of fundamental importance to sedimentation, petrology,
geomorphology, ore deposits, structural geology, geophysics,
and in fact all branches of geological science. It is a generalization
concerning the genetic relationship between the trough like basinal
areas of the earth's crust which accumulate great thicknesses
of sediment and are called geosynclines, and major mountain ranges.
Just as the doctrine of evolution is universally accepted among
biologists, so also the geosynclinal origin of the major mountain
systems is an established principle in geology."2

Five years after the publication of the above geology textbook,
geosynclinal theory was effectively dead. It was replaced by plate
tectonics (which combined the hypotheses of continental drift
and sea floor spreading into the theory of plate tectonics) and
it became obvious to most geologists that geosynclinal theory
never had possessed a testable explanatory mechanism for explaining
the origin of major mountain ranges.

Can biology learn from this lesson of paradigm replacement
in geology? I would hope so. While the neo-Darwinian mechanism
seems satisfactory as an explanation for the origin of variation,
whether it explains the origin of major innovations is an open
question that few Darwinists, especially those that control the
education establishment, will even acknowledge. While many scientists
acknowledge the benefits of multiple working hypotheses, Darwinists
are not about to allow the hypothesis of intelligent design to
even be considered. Their scorn and ridicule is most reminiscent
of the disdain for continental drift. Lines of evidence that may
cast doubt on neo-Darwinism and favor intelligent design (or some
other mechanism) as the explanatory mechanism for the origin of
major innovations (complexity) include:

Patterns of the origin of major innovations in the fossil
record (i.e. Cambrian explosion).

Irreducible Complexity, especially at the molecular level.

The intelligent language of the DNA code that is not reducible
to chemistry and physics.

In any event, it is hoped that biologists can learn from the
humbling lessons of geology and consider the possibility that
old theories, especially those that protect the philosophy of
naturalism, may be hindering the search for truth.